Conventionally, for the identification of gas components or for the determination of gas concentration in measured gas mixtures, one may use sensors that are designed based on a solid electrolyte, and are operated on the mixed potential principle. The mixed potential forms between two electrodes connected using the solid electrolyte, and represents a measure for the gas components occurring in the gas mixture that are to be identified.
This mixed potential between the two preferably platinum-containing or oxidic electrodes, which may, if necessary, be combined with additional chemical elements, depending on the field of application, has in part great cross-sensitivities with respect to additional gas components that are not desired to be detected, particularly with respect to oxygen and/or hydrocarbons. This cross sensitivity corrupts the measuring signal, so that in gas components to be identified especially at low concentrations, e.g. <50 ppm, great measuring inaccuracies may be determined by the deviation of the measured value from the value that corresponds to the actual concentration.